In the bedroom, Angelique waited for him. Only the moonlight shined through the window. Every candle was dark. She sat in the cushioned armchair next to the cold fireplace bricks. She waited hoping that he would come... and hoping he would not come. She waited blindly, not making use of her all-seeing eyes.
When the bedroom door opened so quietly, her heart sank. He had made almost no sound coming up the stairs. He had removed his boots.
Angelique gripped handfuls of her silky nightgown of turquoise blue. The color enhanced the brightness of her greenish-blue irises; eyes like the summer sea, her nursemaid Veronique used to say. Before his entrance, she had hoped that he would come to her as a loving husband and they would forgive each other for arguing. He would have admired the color of her eyes. They might make love again as they did on those nights in Martinique.
In stockinged feet, he silently crept toward the head of the bed. Silver glinted in his hand. A knife. His arm plunged downward, stabbing into the pile of pillows that she had arranged to appear as if she slept there.
"What?" he gasped, pulling away the blankets.
Angelique rose out of the armchair. At her will, every candle in the room flared to life. Dozens of tiny flames sprouted into existence. Moonlight gave way to a rich golden glow. For the first time, they faced off and saw each other clearly.
"Do you hate me that much?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"You're a witch!"
"Yes." Angelique snapped her fingers in his direction. The knife he held sprang out of his hand. The blade clattered on the floor.
"You tricked me into marrying you! I'm under a spell."
"No, Barnabas, you married me by choice."
He rushed at her, raising his arms and holding forth his hands as lobster claws ready to strangle her. Angelique stood her ground. A mere look, and she willed him to stop. His arms pressed helplessly against the empty air as if the space between them were a brick wall.
"I never wanted you to know," she said. "Not like this. I wanted to explain it you, a little at a time, but you have betrayed me."
"I betrayed you?"
When he stopped pushing against the force of power, he regained the use of his limbs. He staggered back.
"You tried to murder me in my own bed!" she cried.
His eyes flashed dark with a terrible wrath. All the power of a stormy ocean and thunderclouds raged out of him. "Josette... When she left me for Jeremiah, that was all your doing! My crazy Aunt Abigail said that witchcraft was responsible. I laughed at her then, but she was right! You did a love spell on Josette to compel her to betray me, admit it!"
"Yes."
"You're responsible for my uncle's death!" His voice blasted at her so deep and so loud that, even from a few feet away, she felt it reverberate in her gut.
"No, I never wanted him to die. I expected that he and Josette would run away together, and you would come to me to be consoled. You were the one who challenged him to a duel. You failed to listen to reason when everyone in the house tried to talk you out of it."
"You're as responsible as if you pulled the trigger!" He gripped the bedpost and squeezed it hard. If he had the strength to could snap it in half he would have, as he wished to snap her neck.
"I've made mistakes, I admit that." She strolled over the rug and came nearer to where he stood. "But you're seeing now that I have greater powers than you can imagine. Those arms of yours... I held you back from hurting me, just now, but I could also compel those same arms to embrace me."
"Why don't you?" He stared at the rumpled blankets on their marriage bed.
"Because I want you to come to me willingly, not as a puppet."
"Why do you want me?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She caressed the back of his shoulder. "I love you."
"Love?" He whirled and came at her again. Once again, she held him back with a mere glance. His whole body strained against the hurricane wind of her power. Gasping and with sweat breaking out on his brow, he backed off. "You and I must have a very different definition of that word."
"Yes, I love you Barnabas! I always have, since I first saw you in Martinique and you kissed my hand. I'm the one you should have chosen. Can't you see that? I have chosen to be your loyal wife forever. What do you want of me? Say the word, and I'll do it. Shall I renounce magic? Shall I never perform another spell? Command me, my husband, and I shall obey."
He went to the window and gazed out through the glass at the silvery night. "All the strange things that have happened since you arrived... When I was choking... I couldn't breathe... The doctor was baffled."
"I was so angry when you rejected me, I wanted you to suffer."
"Sarah... Her illness... That herbal tea you brewed for her was not the cure, was it?"
"I simply lifted the spell." Angelique trembled with the anguish of relief that she could finally speak the truth.
"You would have killed an innocent child if I had not agreed to marry you?"
Angelique gasped. "No! I would never it go that far. I'm very fond of Sarah."
He stomped away from the window and headed for the door. "I can't bear to look at you. I can't stay here!"
"Going back to Ben Stokes, as you did last night?" she cried out.
One hand on the doorknob, he stopped in his tracks. Slowly he turned his head and peered back at her across his shoulder. "How did you know?"
"I have ways of seeing you, wherever you are. I know that you spent the night in Ben Stokes's room, just as I know you visited the lace maker's shop in town today." Angelique snarled at him bitterly, her own rage now erupting to the surface. "I thought you were buying me an exquisite perfume, but it was a vial of poison. Wasn't it? You poisoned the sherry!"
He merely stared at her, unable to voice an answer.
Angelique cackled a brief twitter. "Go on, go back to Ben Stokes! You will find no ally there. If you are thinking to ask his help in killing me, you'll be wasting your time. I have enslaved him to my will. He has assisted me, all along! Yes, that's right. In everything that I've done, Ben has known all about it, and he has protected me."
"As your puppet," he said softly.
"Yes." Angelique raised her chin to study his expression, looking for some sign to answer the question that began to form in her mind. "He didn't... He couldn't have told you about me."
"He didn't say anything to unmask you."
"Of course he couldn't! The spell I put on him is the most powerful one I know. If he were to even think of breathing a word that would hint of betraying me, the spell would choke him off, and he would be rendered a mute for the rest of his life."
Barnabas glowered at her with such fury that it broke her heart. Those eyes, that had once gazed at her with affection and desire, now so dark and cold. She had used her powers indirectly to win him over. Yet that same magic might have cost his heart.
"May I go?" he asked.
"I won't stop you," she replied. "Go, if you must, but if you dare to reveal my secret to anyone, Josette will die. Do you understand? Josette will die!"
"I understand."
When he left, the room crowded with furniture suddenly seemed so empty. Angelique choked back on a sob. A gust of unseen wind snuffed out every candle in the room. All at once, she was in darkness.
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Angelique tossed about in bed throughout the night, tortured by restless dreams, some of them memories, some of them premonitions. She experienced once more the clear sand beaches of Martinique and hugged her nursemaid good-bye. She dreamed of laying in a coffin but being awake and hungry; she shrieked, "Let me out!" against the closed lid.
She dreamed of collapsing in Barnabas's arms, blood streaming down her chest from a small hole near her heart. In this dream, he kissed her cheek tenderly, and he spoke to her deep and low. Am I never to see your eyes again? So often they looked at me with love, and I returned nothing but hatred. I was blinded by my fury... blinded to the pain that my rejection of you caused. And so throughout the years we battled and fought, and I never guessed that beneath my rage, I felt a love as strong as yours.
At last came the dawn. Alone in the cold kitchen, she sipped her coffee and nibbled on hashed brown potatoes. Those sweet words spoken by Barnabas in her dream lingered with her, and she cherished them close to her heart. Someday, she was sure, he would realize how he truly felt. She told herself to be patient and trust him.
Still in her turquoise nightgown, she wandered the house upstairs and down. Dust needed to be swept; windows wiped; rugs beaten; blankets aired... So much to do, and no servants to perform the necessary tasks. She ended up in the parlor, where she built a fire expecting he would want to see a merry blaze when he returned home. The clock on the mantle chimed nine.
No longer able to resist, Angelique called into the flickering blaze, "Eyes of fire. Eyes of flame. Show me what I cannot see."
As if perched on a tree branch, Angelique's mystic eyes looked over the garden at the new Collinwood mansion on the hill. Josette sat there, looking as beautiful as ever in widow's garb. The black lace veil only enhanced her creamy complexion and molasses brown eyes. Morning's light raised a rich golden tone in her skin.
Barnabas sat with Josette on the garden bench. He offered Josette a small gift: a gilded music box. Her mystic eyes were only eyes, and she could not hear a word they said. Yet, when the lid of the music box opened, Angelique could hear the tinkling tune. A playful melody seemed oddly familiar. After a moment of reflection, she recalled an afternoon in the sunlit garden of Andre duPres's plantation house, when Barnabas had spoken of buying a trinket in Morocco and he had whistled this very tune. So, he had been planning to run away with her even back then.
They rose to part ways. Barnabas kissed her gently on the cheek. Angelique's rage surged to a feverish heat throbbing in her mind. She closed her eyes—she could bear to watch no more. How can he be so foolish? He's leaving me! He's running away with her! Doesn't he understand that I will throttle the life out of her, from afar, the moment they enter a carriage together?
Angelique slumped in the armchair, weary in body but her mind sparkled with ideas. She still had the clay figurine that she had used to make Josette fall in love with Jeremiah. She could do anything to it, or make it do anything. What would it be? Turn Josette into a stray cat? Turn Josette into a bearded man? Choke her? Bury her alive? Drown her in flames? Cause her to fall in love with someone else?
The front door opened. Barnabas entered. "Good morning, my dear."
Angelique rose to her feet. "You're back!"
"I said I would return. Here I am." He hung his cloak on the hook by the door. He carried his wolf's-head walking cane and a flat wooden box to the hallway table under the stairs. Angelique spoke to his back as he leisurely made himself busy with removing his gloves and setting down his things.
"You didn't tell anyone about me, did you?"
He frowned at her from across his shoulder. "You know I didn't."
The memory of his tenderness in the dream still haunted her thoughts, but the man who stood before her seemed as a stranger. He was aloof, cool and calm, his face a neutral mask. They may as well be meeting for the first time. How different he was, now, from the man that she had just seen in the garden... the man whose eyes had sparkled to gaze upon Josette... the man who had kissed that dark-haired woman on the cheek. He has never kissed me so tenderly, she thought. I have known passions and ecstasy with him that Josette will never know, but she still owns his heart.
"Who did you see last night?"
Barnabas strolled into the parlor, callously passing by her. He reached the fireplace. He extended his hands to the flames and warmed his palms. Even from behind, Angelique saw his head tilt upward to gaze at the portrait of Josette. The soft-faced maiden with the chestnut hair and deep dark eyes gazed mournfully out from the frame.
She stomped toward him. "I asked, who did you see?"
"Lieutenant Nathan Forbes," he said. "He was skulking about the garden on his way to—or on his way from—an illicit rendezvous with my cousin Millicent. They're quite an odd pair of lovers. Can I trust that your witchcraft had nothing to do it?"
"I have no interest in Mister Forbes or your cousin. Their affair is entirely their own doing. Who else did you see?"
"The Countess duPres." Without turning around, his attention remained fixed upon the portrait above the mantle. "She sends her regards."
"Who else?" she insisted, her voice trembling now.
"No one."
"You're lying!"
Barnabas whirled about to face her. Now his dark eyes flashed with black lightning. "Very well, yes, I spoke to Josette briefly."
"You have been unfaithful to me!"
Barnabas stiffened his shoulders. "I have not! I spent hardly five minutes with her."
"Don't bother to deny it," she cried. "I saw you in the garden. I saw you give her that music box. You have betrayed me with your heart and soul. You still love her, don't you? Don't you?"
"How can I not continue to love her," he shouted back. "Knowing what you've done to her?"
"Oh," she laughed as the fury caused her voice to quaver. "I have not yet begun to do anything to her. But I will! You foolish man, do you think that by sending her away she'll be safe? What other plans do you two have?"
He looked aside, his attention wandering in the direction of the foyer. "None."
Angelique's hands balled into fists. Her arms stiffened against the urge to pound against his chest. "You're lying to me! I'm no fool! You sent her away so you could run off with her after you've killed me!"
He said, "There is no reason for me to do that now. Josette is leaving Collinsport and you can no longer harm her."
Only a murderer could hold his composure so sure and strong. His calm expression awakened a fever of chills and rage. Her skull buzzed with the wrath, the feeling of drowning in the sea. He stood cold-hearted at the shore to watch her sink underneath the crashing surf. More than anything, she needed to wipe that confident smirk off his face. He needed to know the full of her power so he would never dare to betray her again.
"Your precious Josette may be safe, for now, but no one else is."
He furrowed his brow curiously. "What do you mean?"
"I'll show you what I mean!" Angelique hoisted the front hem of her filmy nightgown. She dashed upstairs to their bedroom. She pulled open the bottom drawer of her armoire. She tossed aside piles of neatly folded camisoles and petticoats. Wrapped in parchment paper and tied with a string was the object she had kept hidden.
Rushing downstairs, she held Sarah's wooden doll ahead of her face like a torch. Any last minute regrets she might have had, for shoving it in his face, vanished when she saw that he had returned to standing at the fireplace and continued gazing up at the portrait above the mantle.
"This is the way I will keep you here, Barnabas."
He turned around and his face registered a genuine, tender emotion for the first time since he had come in the door. "What are you doing with Sarah's doll?"
So, the well-learned scholar knows nothing! Why did I even bother to hide it? If he would have found it in my armoire with pins sticking out of it, he would have laughed it off as nonsense. Well, he won't be laughing now.
"Do you remember when Sarah was very ill? She had a terrible pain here in her shoulder." She stabbed a pin into the doll.
"Stop it Angelique!"
She shivered like a teacher giving her first lesson to a stubborn pupil. He needed to know. He needed to truly understand how terribly easy it was. "And another one here in her chest." She stabbed a hat pin into the doll again.
Somewhere, in the grand new house faraway and up the hill, a little girl collapsed the floor and was once again screaming in mysterious pains.
"Give me that doll!" Barnabas stepped closer but her cold stare held him off.
"Stay away from me. This pin is aimed at her heart if you come any closer."
"Please, Angelique." He raised his hands invitingly. "I'll do anything you want me to do, but please, remove those pins!
If she weren't so angry, she could have almost pitied him. "No, I don't believe you anymore!"
Barnabas looked at her warmly, the way he used to long ago. His hands opened in a gesture of saintly compassion. "I promise you, I will not leave Collinwood."
Lies rang in her ears like a melody played off key. "Oh, you would leave immediately if you had no reason to stay here. And I am making certain that you have that reason!"
His warm tenderness soured. His eyes hardened once more to the expression he had when stabbing a knife into her pillow. "I'm telling you, if you do anything to harm Sarah, I'll..."
"You'll do nothing, as long as she is on the brink of death."
"Brink of death?" he cried.
Jaw set firmly, she reeled him into her complete control. Not a puppet, not like Ben Stokes, but a man being given a choice. "She will not die unless you deceive me again. But she will come close. Very close!"
She focused on aiming a hat pin into the heart of the little doll.
Barnabas in desperation backed away from her. Angelique's hand continued to tremble against the urge to plunge the pin into the doll's heart. What did it matter if Sarah died after all? More potential victims were available to be threatened: his mother, his aunt, his young cousins, and even his father. How ironic that he could so deeply love everyone he knew—except her.
He gracefully retreated backwards to the fireplace in five slow steps. Good, she thought. Very good. He's learning that he cannot oppose me.
He turned reaching to the cushion of the armchair. Too late, she realized that the flat wooden box he had brought home with him had been moved from the hallway table to that chair. Too late, she realized what the box contained.
Barnabas raised a flintlock pistol. The barrel's empty hole stared into her face. Gunpowder popped. The muzzle flashed a rosette of bright sparks. Smoke puffed.
The lead ball's impact shoved Angelique backwards against the archway's column. The core of her chest filled with liquid. It was hard to breathe. Blood leaked down her breast. "Oh Barnabas," she cried. "What have you done!" Her legs folded underneath her. She slid down the wall to sprawl, half-sitting, with her turquoise nightgown spread around her.
Barnabas rushed to kneel beside her. He pulled the pins out of Sarah's doll but made no attempt to embrace Angelique. So this was not the moment she had dreamed. He gazed down at her with such a cold hate that she wondered if the dream of him confessing love were a premonition at all, or just the vain imaginings of her sleeping mind. If only Josette knew this other side of him—the heart of a man who could murder his own wife without remorse.
All the rage she had ever felt in her life paled to nothing. A clear plan of vengeance took form in her mind. Josette would come to know the monster that Barnabas truly was in his heart. Fire blazed higher. Her mystic eyes came to life. She watched this scene play out in a blur of two angles misty and superimposed on each other: the view from where she sprawled half-dead on the floor, and the view from the chandelier where her power was reflected in a thousand facets of crystal.
She said in a trembling, pained voice, "You didn't do the job well enough, Barnabas. I'm not dead yet. While I can still breathe, I will have my revenge."
He got to his feet and silently stared down at her.
"I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins. You wanted your Josette so much, well you shall have her, but not in the way you would have chosen..." She gulped, panting, struggling for air as her lungs filled with fluid. She tasted blood and bile, metallic and sour. "You will never rest, Barnabas. You will never be able to love anyone, for whoever loves you will die. That is my curse, and you will live with it through all eternity!"
Her mortal eyes went dark. She collapsed forward in a heap of turquoise silk.
Yet her mystic eyes still flew, hungry and eager to obey orders. Eyes on the wings of a bat swooped down into Barnabas's neck. Little fangs chewed into his jugular vein. His blood spurted out, staining his cravat and dribbling down his shirt. He cried out with agony as the bat feasted on his blood. The vicious animal drinking also slobbered its own poison saliva into his veins. Tiny black wings, thousands, millions, swarmed into his blood and made their home perched on each little scarlet bead.
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